• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.199-206
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• 2003

Characteristics of the static shift are discussed by comparing the three-dimensional MT inversion with/without static shift parameterization. The galvanic distortion by small-scale shallow feature often leads severe distortion in inverted resistivity structures. The new inversion algorithm is applied to four numerical data sets contaminated by different amount of static shift. In real field data interpretations, we generally do not have any a-priori information about how much the data contains the static shift. In this study, we developed an algorithm for finding both Lagrangian multiplier for smoothness and the trade-off parameter for static shift, simultaneously in 3-D MT inversion. Applications of this inversion routine for the numerical data sets showed quite reasonable estimation of static shift parameters without any a-priori information. The inversion scheme is successfully applied to all the four data sets, even when the static shift does not obey the Gaussian distribution. Allowing the static shift parameters have non-zero degree of freedom to the inversion, we could get more accurate block resistivities as well as static shifts in the data. When inversion does not consider the static shift as inversion parameters (conventional MT inversion), the block resistivities on the surface are modified considerably to match possible static shift. The inhomogeneous blocks on the surface can generate the static shift at low frequencies. By those mechanisms, the conventional 3-D MT inversion can reconstruct the resistivity structures to some extent in the deeper parts even when moderate static shifts are in the data. As frequency increased, however, the galvanic distortion is not frequency independent any more, and thus the conventional inversion failed to fit the apparent resistivity and phase, especially when strong static shift is added. Even in such case, however, reasonable estimation of block resistivity as well as static shift parameters were obtained by 3-D MT inversion with static shift parameterization.